


Aim

by Sarai



Series: Little Crows [2]
Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Gen, Inej Ghafa-centric, Minor Injuries, Pirate Inej Ghafa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29836395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: A newcomer about The Wraith has taken a fall!Many years have passed since the events of Crooked Kingdom. Captain Inej Ghafa brings her son out to sea for the first time. When he is injured, she patches him up and offers reassurance to an aspiring young pirate.
Series: Little Crows [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2193399
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Aim

**Author's Note:**

> Each of the initial Little Crow fics focused on a Crow and their parent or guardian, but I have a hard time imagining Inej as a child, so in this sequel fic, she is the adult. It also didn't feel right to continue posting on a Weekly Grisha Prompts fic once the challenge period was complete!
> 
> I've got a bit of a headcanon about her realizing her lifestyle is not a good one for a baby and co-parenting with Jesper and Wylan (and Kaz, in his own way), which is mentioned in the fic. I hope it makes sense! There's a lot of my own headcanon influence. 
> 
> The child in question is heavily implied to be biologically Inej and Kaz's, so if you object to that, consider yourself warned.

Injuries were commonplace things about _The Wraith_ , bumps and bruises, scrapes and rope burns. Few of the ship’s sailors and fighters had been both when they began, and plenty had been neither. Everyone learned. Most failed in the small ways before mastering their new skills.

Inej had watched some of the clumsiest people, utterly untrained, become some of the strongest and most competent sailors. 

None of that seemed to soothe the boy sitting before her in the Captain’s cabin. His dark coffee eyes were fixed on the floor. A faint blush livened his brown cheeks, still round with youth. Looking at him now, she wondered if she had been right to bring him on the ship. Maybe another year or two would have been better.

She pressed the thought aside, focusing instead on his arm—the one currently held steady by her hand around his wrist, welling blood from a jagged cut. The bloody and badly torn sleeve was pushed up to his elbow. Her free hand squeezed excess moisture from a rag, letting it drip back into the bowl.

“If we had a Healer aboard…”

She left the thought unfinished as she brought the rag to his arm. Inej had cared for her own injuries, cared for injuries among her crew. The blood shouldn’t have bothered her. It was a little different seeing her own blood spilled from someone else’s body.

He winced as the cloth touched his damaged skin and tried to pull away. Inej held firm. She needed to do this—quick and done and it would all be over.

“My brave boy,” she soothed. 

They were in calm waters now. The gentle swaying of the ship did nothing to unsteady her hand. She suspected even the slight motion had been enough to facilitate his fall, but she was far more used to shipboard life, barely aware of it unless she looked. If he must fall, and he must do it when they had no Healers available, at least he had done so when she could look after him well on a sturdy ship and easy waves.

Preparing the soap, she warned, “Now this may sting, Nav.”

“I’m not a baby, Mama,” he objected.

She spared a glance for his face. Tears wobbled in his eyes, but they hadn’t spilled yet.

“A ship is no place for babies,” Inej said. “I brought you because I knew you were ready.” And thus no baby!

He hissed as she washed his injured arm. The suds ran pink.

“And I know you’re used to things being a little different,” she added, because this was new to him. He was learning. She understood. 

At home, he probably had easy access to a Healer. She knew he wasn’t feeling well on the ship—that he had thrown up a few times in the past few days and was stashing food in the bottom of his small trunk of possessions. And it weighed heavy on her heart. What sort of mother was she that after three days, her son had a bloody wound and secrets hidden beneath his hammock?

“Yeah,” Nav agreed. “When Da does that, he’ll say to count down from ten. He always swears he’ll wait until one, but then he never does. But he always makes me think he will.”

“That’s your da,” Inej said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips even as she laid a dressing carefully on his arm. “With that silver tongue. What did your fathers say about you coming on this trip?”

She shouldn’t ask.

But she was still the Wraith, and though she restrained herself from stealing secrets—mostly—she still knew they existed.

Nav smiled.

“Da said over his dead body,” he said. “But Papa talked him into it.”

“Really? I would’ve thought…”

“What?”

As she wrapped a sturdy bandage around his arm, Inej said, “I would have thought it would be your papa worrying.”

“Papa?!” Nav burst, laughing. “No way. It’s Da who never lets us do anything. Father says they’re both too soft.”

Well that came as no surprise! Inej never asked nor expected Kaz to be anything but what he was. He had always been present for their son, but it had been Wylan bouncing her sweet infant in his arms, Jesper holding the toddler upside-down by his ankles. They had been good, loving fathers just as she knew they would, but she always thought of Wylan as the cautious one. 

Then again, whenever Inej visited, they had given her the lead. It had been, _let’s see what Mama says!_

“There,” she announced, his arm all bandaged up. “You’ll be good as new in no time. But you don’t feel fully healed.”

He opened his mouth to object.

Inej kissed his forehead. 

“All you need is a full belly, an open road, and an easy heart.” She moved the water bowl and the cloths soiled with his blood, then sat beside him. Wrapping an arm around his shoulders, she said, “One out of three isn’t enough.”

“It’s just…” 

He looked at his hands, his shoulders slumped under her arm. He had good hands. She had seen them make a coin appear as if from thin air, write a tidy page, and fight passably. She knew he could sew up a tear like the one in his shirt.

“I thought…” He sighed. “I thought I’d be good at it. Like you are.”

“Oh, mej…”

It had been Inej—the thought of Inej—that drove him to try scaling the rat lines. She should have known rather than assuming he was simply being adventurous! It wasn't that at all. He was trying to be like his mama. 

“I wasn’t born a sailor, my little love. I had never even been on a ship until I was sixteen, and I had so much to learn!”

He didn’t need to know what came before. He didn’t need to know how she learned to trust her feet, why she learned to kill, nor that she had a skill for walking the rope from her earliest days. That didn’t matter. Plenty had overtaken her without that natural skill.

“Really?”

She kissed him again.

“Mama!” he objected, squirming.

“That was too many kisses, was it?”

“Maybe I’m all better,” he sulked, looking at his arm. 

“Maybe I’ll help you learn the ropes,” she retorted. “And I won’t kiss you too much, no matter how proud I am and how much I love you. Now, I’m not just your mama—on the ship, I’m your captain.”

Nav nodded, his mouth set in a solemn line. 

“Good. Your captain needs you to fetch us some hot water.”

Another solemn nod.

“Because,” she continued, letting a grin creep onto her face, “your mama has a cache of chocolate and powdered milk.”

“Yes, Captain!” he cried as he hopped to his feet. He swayed just slightly as he left the room, more confident in his steps now than when he first came aboard—far more. He’d be a sailor before they knew it!

Inej smiled. All his worry and upset seemed gone at the prospect of hot chocolate—and maybe that would be easier for him to keep down than the solid food he had struggled with the past few days. He had tried so hard for those days and he deserved a treat. And he was her son. When had she ever needed a reason to give him something special?

She tidied away the water and soiled cloths while he was gone. It was all instinct by now.

Maybe she had rushed it. Maybe she should have given him a little longer on land… but he had wanted to come to sea with her and he was old enough to learn. And tonight they would have hot chocolate and a nice talk, and tomorrow she would help him find his feet.

It was a simple thing, after all.

A matter of aim.


End file.
